Quotes from Noggin

John Corey Whaley ·  340 pages

Rating: (9.9K votes)


“But in that moment I understood what they say about nostalgia, that no matter if you're thinking of something good or bad, it always leaves you a little emptier afterward.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“Maybe we all just exist, all versions of us exist at times, and we have to figure out a way to get to each of them, to find each one and tell that version that it's okay, that it's all justthe way it works, a concept too powerful to ignore but too complicated to explain.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“We all get lots of people. And maybe we don’t always get to have them the exact way we want them, but if we can figure out a way to compromise, you know, then we can keep them all.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“Some people say dying alone is a fate worse than death itself. Well, they should try being alone during the living part sometimes. There's no quicker way to make you wonder why the hell you ever thought you'd want to return.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“You ever feel like you know someone so much that they can breathe for you? Like when their chest and your chest rise and fall, they do it together because they have to? That's how it felt. That's how it always felt.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin



“I thought maybe a day was coming when I'd stop constantly worrying about how to live. Maybe at some point I'd just start living, no questions asked.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“You can find ways to be okay with dying, but you can’t fake your way through living.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“No matter how often you see or talk to someone, no matter how much you know them or don't know them, you always fill up some space in their lives that can't ever be replaced the right way again once you leave it.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“You have to forget about people when you can't have them anymore. That's the only way to be okay.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“Secrets, he said, will boil under your skin until it feels like every time you speak, every time you look in the mirror, every time you hug someone or kiss someone or tell someone you love them, it feels like you’re going to die.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin



“All that time I'd spent worrying about why I'm here and how I'm supposed to live had kept me from remembering that Jeremy Pratt will never be back. His people will never have him again. He is Jeremy Pratt who died and stayed dead and will never get a second chance. And even though that hand that spent the last five years holding hers was somehow doing it again, it wasn't Jeremy Pratt's anyone”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“You're both living these lives you didn't choose to live in a world full of people telling you what that's supposed to mean. That's messed up.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“Okay, so first we get you a new computer and then a Facebook page. Priorities, you know," he said, typing in Kyle's password.

"What would I do without you--"

"Found her," he interrupted. "She's at Carrie's OK Bar. It's downtown."

"What the hell is Carrie's OK Bar?"

"It's a karaoke bar. Travis, come on."

"Wait, how do you know she's there?"

"She checked in there about twenty minutes ago."

"What does that mean?"

"Oh. Right. Since you left, it's become very important that we all constantly know each other's thoughts, locations, and birthdays."

"That's really stupid. Except for in this one very specific situation. I can't go if her fiancé's there, though. That would be too weird."

"He's not."

"How do you know?"

"Because she put 'Girls' Night' with about five exclamation points after it."

"Are people just asking to be murdered?"

"Pretty much. So are we going?”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“It's a real shame. I like how people act on holidays. Everyone just seems . . . I don't know-- lighter, maybe. Like they're allowed to have fun all day long and eat anything they want and do silly things, and no one cares because, hey, it's a holiday, so why not?”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“Everyone just outgrew me. Now I think I'm just haunting them.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin



“You have to forget about people when you can’t have them anymore.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“But in that moment I understood what they say about nostalgia, that no matter if you’re thinking of something good or bad, it always leaves you a little emptier afterward.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“We have this way of putting certain ideas out of our minds...we do that. Humans, I mean. We have to bury things, hopes and dreams, so deep sometimes that it takes a little while to access those things once we need them again.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“You know things are weird when you start appreciating your farts.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“That's the thing. You come back and you expect everyone to be just the way they were when you left. But it's not that easy, okay? You can't just force us all to be how you liked us.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin



“Secrets...will boil under your skin until it feels like every time you speak, every time you look in the mirror, every time you hug someone or kiss someone or tell someone you love them, it feels like you're going to die.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“(N)o matter how often you see or talk to someone, no matter how much you know them or don't know them, you always fill up some space in their lives that can't ever be replaced the right way again once you leave it.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“I'm not sure why so many people get addicted to pain pills because, at a certain point, not feeling anything becomes much more painful than the disease eating away at your cells.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“That's how I knew I loved her so much, because not loving her didn't make any sense once I'd known what it felt like.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


“When one of us is dying, they say a part of all of us is. I think that's why it hurts. We go our whole lives losing little chunks until we can't lose any more of them.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin



“(I)t's too easy to get hung up on people the way we do. I mean, that we all get one person to be ours and that's it. We should look at it differently. We all get lots of people. And maybe we don't always get to have them the exact way we want them, but if we can figure out a way to compromise, you know, then we can keep them all...We all get people that help us make sense of the world, right? We just have to figure out how to keep them however we can.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Noggin


About the author

John Corey Whaley
Born place: The United States
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